This I Don't Believe

This I believe. Generally speaking, people are stupid. They tend to base their beliefs on superstitions, ill-conceived notions, and poorly rationalized half-truths.

In a search for inspiration, I picked up This I Believe - The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman. Derived from a NPR series, the book originated from the resurrection of a 1951 Edward R. Murrow radio program of the same name and contains short essays by average and famous people trying to condense their personal core beliefs into a couple of hundred words.

Some of the essays are from the original 1951 series and some from a project NPR put together.

Although I am only half way through, thus far, the book has presented only a few profound glimpses into the human intellect. Very few.

The best one is the first one, Be Cool To The Pizza Dude by Sarah Adams. She presents the pizza delivery dude as a charming example of why we should follow the Golden Rule. I will probably be a bit nicer to other people because of it. (But, I have to admit, I was already biased toward this behavior. I was once a pizza dude myself, having worked for Domino's while in college.)

Unfortunately, most of the other essays were slop. Even some of the more famous authors like Albert Einstein came up pretty lame. He called for “the establishment of a planned economy coupled with an education toward social goals.” Really? Social and economical engineering? That is what he believed in? Isn’t that what the Soviets and Nazis were all about? We need to have the smart people tell the dumb people how to live. That qualifies as enlightened thought?

Anyway, I won’t be wasting any time on This I Believe II. Although, I do have to admit, I will be taking a peek at it in the bookstore. The second edition contains a couple of pages of -- I am guessing -- brilliant insight put together by professional skateboarder Tony Hawk. The rest I will bypass, venturing a guess that there will be very few life-changing revelations to be found.